were attaining such prodigious bowshots – but the return salvo brought down another rank of horsemen. Still the rest came on, now only a hundred ells away.
The horsemen abruptly veered, whipping light throwing-spears against the Varangian shields as they turned off towards the north. Another salvo from the Varangian archers and the horses and riders began to pile up; the following ranks were refusing to advance beyond the flailing parapet of fallen mounts. Saracen arrows still rained with surprising force against the Norse wall of shields, but Haraldr could not see a single Varangian down. Haraldr yelled for Halldor and Ulfr to come to the centre.
‘Have we slain enough of their horses?’ asked Halldor dryly.
Haraldr shook his head. ‘They seemed bold enough even within our bowshot. Perhaps they are tempting us to begin our own offensive . . . Kristr!’ Haraldr’s sudden epiphany clutched at his belly. ‘This is only the feint! The Empress!’ Haraldr brought his head back and bellowed so that he was heard over even the cataclysmic shrilling of the Saracens. ‘Boar!’
The line of Varangians almost instantly re-formed into the impenetrable wedge of the swine-array. Haraldr took the snout, flanked by Halldor and Ulfr. The Saracens quieted for a moment as Varangian axes pounded on shields. As the boar moved to the south, the mounted fury of the Saracens raced to blunt its snout.
Haraldr did not know how long the Rage seized him. So immense was the relief of feeling Odin’s favour again, he thought he could slash and hack until his blade wore to a nub. The Saracens were indeed brave; they came forward in endless files with their howling black faces and agate eyes, their silver arcs swishing. And they fell relentlessly to the Norse blades. Haraldr’s boots were soaked with blood when the Saracen horde finally disappeared, almost vaporously, like a sea mist rolling back from a morning sun.
The road ahead was littered with corpses. Like terrible blossoms, white robes and quilted cotton jerkins were spotted with brilliant crimson. Roman and Saracen corpses at first, then a growing preponderance of Romans, quilted armour soaked, sleeveless byrnnies glazed red, conical helms cast everywhere. Horses bleated in agony, joined by the screams of men. The vultures made obscene circles above. The thematic army of Cilicia had been virtually annihilated.
The Imperial carriages were surrounded by a low ridge of corpses. Several white-robed eunuchs sat wailing, beating their chests and tearing at their silken hems; Symeon stood like a corpse that had neglected to fall. A dark-haired, silk-clad woman wandered dazed, and Haraldr., breast exploding, began to run to Maria. But no, it was Anna. Then Haraldr saw the Empress’s purple-panelled carriage. The lumbering four-wheeled wagon had been tipped over. The gold-scrolled, white-lacquered door on the upturned side was open. Numb with horror, Haraldr peered inside. The scent that lingered, her scent, choked him with anguish. The carriage was empty.
Blymmedes charged up and leapt off his horse, his face pale and scowling beneath his golden helm. Clearly shocked, he stumbled over the corpses and looked inside the carriage. He turned to Haraldr with pain in his eyes and whispered, ‘You are the better tactician, my friend.’ Then he turned over one of the Saracen corpses. The man had a neat black beard and decayed teeth that showed between slightly parted, claret lips. One of his eyes had become a livid bruise, but the other was open, and the staring iris was as black as a raven’s plume. ‘Not Saracens,’ said the Domestic hoarsely, tears welling in his eyes. ‘Seljuks.’
Haraldr looked across the plain to the sea; the sun skimmed rays over distant golden ripples. He turned and the snowy crests to the east flared with the glow of the plunging orange globe. Where was his Mother? And where was his love? Distractedly, the pain too great for thought, he began to check the fallen for signs of life. He nudged a shoulder and turned a limp body on its back. He knew the now-battered bronze breastplate before he saw the face. Michael Kalaphates. Haraldr ripped away the breastplate and hollered for water for the bloodied lips. Kalaphates was alive.
‘Komes!’ Haraldr left Kalaphates with the water-bearer and ran to Blymmedes, who knelt beside a corpse he had uncovered from beneath several slain Seljuks. His arrogant features almost serene, the Strategus Meletius Attalietes’s body reposed in eternal sleep, his golden breastplate punctured by a broken spear and his golden helm crushed into his skull just above his ear. Blymmedes sealed Attalietes’s partially open eyes with respect, closed his own, and whispered an epitaph for the Strategus. ‘He fought bravely.’
The Magnara Palace was dark and empty, the tapestries shrouds on the wall, the golden throne a looming silhouette. The carpets had been rolled up and the black-frocked figure paced the bare marble; despite the size of his enormous spade-shaped boots, the Orphanotrophus Joannes made no sound to mask the whisper of his fine wool frock. As he walked, he calculated the time as he calculated everything – in his head, with unerring precision. He did not need to rely on the endlessly clicking water clocks that coerced lesser men, because he could rely on the sound – no, not the sound, but something more subtle, more intuitive – of the city. His city. He could sense its rhythms, the rising in the morning and the settling at night, with ineffable, primal instinct, in the way a bee might locate its hive. It was a vibration only he could feel, and it told him the time with far more precision that the grandiose machines the Dhynatoi amused themselves with. And from the movements of his city he could also discern much that those clocks would never tell their owners high on their hilltop palaces. But at this moment only time concerned him.
It goes well; this much he permitted himself. The message received in the second hour, exactly according to plan. The third hour had passed with no signal; that was an enormous relief, particularly given the unpredictability of the agents they were dealing with. But the excruciating effort would be for naught if the fourth hour passed without a message. And his city told the Orphanotrophus that the fourth hour of the night was three quarters gone. The message was already a few minutes overdue.
Hating his own lack of control, the Orphanotrophus walked behind the throne; left the audience chamber through the silent, hidden entrance used by the Emperor; climbed the large spiral staircase to the cabinet chamber, and took the smaller staircase up into the clock room and observation deck. The attendants went about their duties, accustomed to if not comfortable with the lurking presence of the giant monk. Joannes stepped out onto his own private balcony adjacent to the observation deck. Lamps flared along the towering seawall beneath him, and the bright points of ship lanterns drifted on the Bosporus. Here and there the Asian palaces of the Dhynatoi formed little constellations off into the east. He knew the exact position of Mount Afxendios and stared without blinking. Only ten minutes left in the hour.
Eight. The beacon glimmered for a tantalizing instant. Then, more brilliant than the evening star, the light that had begun in faraway Toulon exploded and flared across the last expanse of Asia Minor. A pity, thought Joannes as he quickly turned and headed back into the palace. The Senator and Magister Nicon Attalietes has lost his favourite son.
Joannes opened the door to the small ground-floor antechamber, a disused room once employed for storage of the censers and icons that cluttered the Magnara on ceremonial occasions; Joannes had had many of these superfluous treasures melted into more utilitarian assets. His guest waited in darkness and Joannes lit a single oil lamp; he had learned years ago that men found flickering light on his face far more frightening than simply his voice emerging from the shadows. Thank you for waiting,’ Joannes told his guest.
The man shifted his clumsy, sandalled feet and bowed deeply. His rough burlap tunic exposed thick burly calves. His face was round but had long seamlike scars from which his jowls seemed to hang as if wired to his face; his richly veined nose was studded with two warts. He smelled of cheap resiny wine.
‘I wanted you and your friends to know the truth before the Dhynatoi begin to shovel their lies about the city,’ said Joannes. ‘A terrible tragedy has occurred due to the negligence of the powerful who have so much while you have so little. The powerful who impede every effort your Imperial Administration makes to ease your suffering.’
‘No one has done more for us than yourself, who we worship as the blessed hand of Christ the King, Orphanotrophus,’ said the man in a brutishly obsequious voice, the growl of a bear paying sincere homage to a lion. He clutched his broad, scabbed fists to his tunic as he spoke in a gesture of humility and anxiety. ‘You know how much we folk are beholden to what you have done.’
Joannes studied the clutching, ham-hock fists with satisfaction. The Butcher – he did not know the man’s real name, nor did he care to know – had in fact been a real pork butcher once. He had run afoul of the Prefect for buying his swine outside the city at prices below the officially mandated wholesale rates, then charging an exorbitant mark-up at his shop in the city. Of course it was not that crime that had condemned him; his fate had been sealed by his refusal to share the requisite portion of the illicit profit with the Prefect. Joannes had found the Butcher in the Neorion Tower, where he often browsed for suitable instruments of his myriad policies. And now the Butcher was still a butcher of sorts.
